OFFSTAGE: Keith Urban Once Fired From Heavy Metal Band

(CMT Offstage keeps a 24/7 watch on everything that’s happening with country music artists behind the scenes and out of the spotlight.)

If the band Fractured Mirror is still together, I’m sure they are kicking themselves for throwing Keith Urban out of the band 30 years ago. Urban doesn’t seem to be all that bummed about it, though. He told the story of his short-lived teenage rock career
to Conan O’Brien on Monday’s (May 6) Conan. “I played in a rock band for about a week,” Urban admitted of the stint when he was 15. At that point, he’d been playing guitar for nine years, but it was all country. “A friend of mine was in a band,” Urban said. “And he wanted to be the singer, so he said, ‘I want you to be the guitar player.’ The band was called Fractured Mirror, and it was a heavy metal band. They did Judas Priest, Scorpion and Black Sabbath. So I joined the band, and I’ve got my Strat and my Marshall amp and everything.” The problem was that Urban had just discovered and fallen in love with the recordings of Ricky Skaggs. “So we’d play a Judas Priest song, and they’d throw me the solo, and I’m doing all these chicken pickin’ guitar solos,” he recalled. So the band fired Urban, he had his first identity crisis, and then, well, we all know what happened after that.